Thursday, June 28, 2012

OUR CFA STORY: FIVE YEARS LATER

Today marks a momentous occasion. Five years ago today, the very first free-standing Chick-fil-A restaurant in Little Rock opened up. And somehow, John was at the helm of that crazy adventure. How did a Family and Human Service major end up in food service? Such a great question, and one that we often ask. We are crazy blessed. Blessed does not even begin to describe it.

When I graduated from college in 2003, my father had been dead for one week. Needless to say, I was not in the mood to do a job that was emotionally draining. A dear family friend (who had been quite close to my dad) was about to open up a CFA in Northwest Arkansas and asked if I would like to join him in that venture. He said he would make it my dream job. I was a bit dubious, since I am certain that serving chicken had never entered my wildest dreams. However, I knew he would be great to work for, and I committed to a year.

As I sit here, 8.5 years later, I still marvel at the work God did to keep me in CFA. I learned all the operations while I served as general manager for a year, and then transitioned into marketing when John and I started our Masters program. I applied for other jobs, but nothing ever seemed to work out, and I really did love working for CFA. John moon-lighted as the Cow during this time. (Just imagine a child in footy-pajamas that are about 6 inches too short, and you can conjure up a pretty good mental image of what 6'4" John was like in the cow costume. He was a huge cow.)

While we were getting our masters, John was working for a leadership development organization as a Project Coordinator. He loved the work, as well as the exposure to different business people. It was a fantastic place to build confidence and to develop real world skills. As we were nearing the end of our program, we felt like we really should have figured out the rest of our lives by that point. Instead, our plan was to move to South Korea for a year to teach English. We also lined up a few other international trips before that gig was supposed to start up, because we knew that it would be a perfect time to travel. No kids, no real job, no house, not much stuff.

However, God had different plans for us - or at least, different choices in front of us. The leadership center where John worked graciously extended a job offer, and at the same time, my boss (slash surrogate uncle) sat us down and told us that pursuing CFA would make a lot of sense. Staying where we were seemed such a safe and comfortable thing to do, and chasing after CFA seemed like such a long-shot, with so much uncertainty. Selling chicken for a living? Really?

During this time of wrestling through decisions (we take things quite seriously in our family), we walked into our church, and the title of the sermon was on the screen. It read,

"Take This Job and Love It."

I kid you not.

And, this post has gotten more long-winded than I imagined and will have to be finished up in another post, maybe later today. (Here's a link to the next post!)